There and Back Again: A Missionary's Tale

3 November 2014

Dear Family and Friends,

Thank you for your emails, especially this week! I really enjoy hearing about how things are going back at home. It sounds like you had quite the week! Which did Rachel like better, being Kili or a nerd for Halloween? Yeah, it looks like you've been doing a lot of work around the house! No one will recognize the house when they come to it for Christmas because it'll look so different!

As for your questions about elections. Yes, they do have elections here, but I'm not sure how they work. I don't think that they are around this time of year, I believe that they are in the summer. Also, I won't know if they are similar to the way they campaign for elections in America, just because I won't be seeing them on TV or anything like that. Dad, I hope that you have a chance to get out hunting and I hope that you'll be able to get a deer! A lot of the time we'll make pasta for lunch, and we found a place that we feel comfortable buying meat from, so we'll have pasta with meat sauce. The meat just isn't as good as that venison hamburger that we have at home. That's one thing I miss quite a bit.

No, Elder Rasband isn't related to the general authority. {Jacob was on splits with Elder Rasband last week.} That was one of the first questions I asked him. He said he gets that a lot. No way!! Josh {Woodruff, a Facebook friend} is getting married?? That's awesome! I actually bumped into Josh at the MTC twice. He works there as a German teacher. Wow, that's awesome to hear that. Thanks for letting me know. Haha, Juxhin is awesome! {He sent Jacob a Facebook message. Can you tell that Mom just checked Jacob's Facebook account?} In fact, Esmeralda (the girl that got baptized a couple weeks ago) is Juxhin's cousin. So I was really hoping that Juxhin would be able to come to her baptism, but he wasn't able to make it. I was really bummed about that.

This week was pretty good. Probably the highlight of this week for me was Friday when we had interviews with President Weidmann. I love President Weidmann so much! I especially love when I get the chance to see him. At first I was really intimidated by him. When he just arrived in the mission (several months ago) he had an interview with all of the missionaries in their homes. It was kinda' a get to know you interview. He asked me to share with him my favorite scripture. I said the reference and we read it together, then he proceeded to ask me a bunch of in depth questions about it. I wasn't able to answer all of the questions, so after the interview I felt like I "failed" it (if you could fail a get to know you interview). However, now that I've had the opportunity to meet with him several more times, we are a lot closer and I'm not intimidated by him. I really enjoy his company. So I always look forward to meeting with him, or being able to talk with him at any chance I get. We spoke just about missionary work and how things had been going. I expressed to him some difficulties we had been having and he gave some counsel of how we can improve those areas. I really enjoyed the interview with him! After interviews, we had the ward Halloween party at the church. It was a lot of fun. The young men and young women were very excited about it and they spent a lot of time preparing and decorating and they put a lot of work into it! A lot of people showed up and they had a lot of fun! Everyone was really excited and most people dressed up in different costumes.

This week we were able to get a couple new investigators! This is a huge blessing for us. Things had been going really slow for us for the past couple of weeks, so getting just a few people to accept a return appointment has been a great blessing for us. Thank you for all of your thoughts and prayers, they paid off a lot! I know that when we are united in prayer together that we can accomplish great things. I could feel a special power with us this week as we were working. Don't get me wrong, this week still had its fair share of challenges and set backs, but I attribute this success in finding new investigators to be due to your prayers. I know that many great blessings come into our lives from prayer and I know that we can cause blessings to come into the lives of others through our prayers of faith. It happened this week. I know that many blessings come into our lives from prayer because I've experienced many of them in my life. There is a scripture in the Book of Mormon that talks about prayer:

"Therefore ye must always pray unto the Father in my name;

And whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, which is right, believing that ye shall receive, behold it shall be given unto you.

Pray in your families unto the Father, always in my name, that your wives and your children may be blessed."

-- 3 Nephi 18:19-21

In this scripture we understand that if we pray to our Heavenly Father in the name of Jesus Christ and we seek good things, they will be given to us according to our faith. One great way that we can help share the Gospel of Jesus Christ is by praying for opportunities to share it. I know that if we will pray for opportunities to share the Gospel with others that the Lord will give us the opportunity. Then it's up to us to act on that prompting and share the Gospel in the way we feel prompted. I know that through this way, we will be showing our faith to our Father in Heaven and we're also showing our willingness and desire to share His Gospel and the happiness that comes from it. I know that as we pray for these experiences the Lord will give them to us and we will grow from them.

Thank you so much for your thoughts and prayers! Jeni nish! Ju dua shumë. Javë të mbarë! Zoti ju bekoftë!

Me dashuri, Elder Watson

Here's a picture from the Halloween Party. This is Elder Keck and I
(we dressed up as each other) with an awesome investigator, Leridon,
who also dressed up as a missionary! He should be getting baptized this month!